YIL-TAS

Content warning: World War II Pacific Theater setting, war violence, death

The ground is trampled, the soil torn, bugs and tap-roots exposed. In a shallow pit, men are trapped. 

Bullets race invisibly over helmeted heads dripping sweat. To lift their heads would be to invite death. Not to watch their enemy would also be to invite death. Being in this place at all is inviting death.

Yet they are trying to avoid death.

One man inches up, rifle clutched against his body, any sound he might make overwhelmed by the unfathomable roar of war all around. Tilting his head back, the man peeks with one eye over the lip of the pit. 

An explosive shell falls nearby, and natural shrapnel blasts into the foxhole. Beneath the topsoil, this island is made almost entirely of coral rock, sharp as obsidian knives. It has already sliced through the thick leather combat boots worn by the soldiers, and their hands are gashed and bloody. 

The reef consisting of that same coral made the approach to this island horribly difficult. The water was too shallow for boats, no more than ankle-deep, except where shells had blasted holes in the reef. If a man fell into one of those, he was up to his chest in bloody seawater, and the tropical swell could send a floating body crashing down on the head of a living one. There were many floating bodies—too many to count.

As they struggled out of the holes and onward, the surge tried to suck the feet out from under every man, and tempted him with possessions it had picked from the jacket pockets of the fallen. Cash bobbed on the water, but no one took it. 

First objective reached, a few American Marines who made it alive to Peleliu’s shore are pinned down by enemy fire. 

The Marine peering over the lip of the pit shouts down at his companions; there is no other way to be heard over the surrounding gunfire, explosions, and screams of the dying. 

Two more Marines crouching against the opposite side of the pit have a TBX radio set up between them. Both wear headsets, connected to the radio and each other by snaking red and yellow wires. One is turning the crank, providing power. The other has his finger poised over the operation buttons.

One to receive.

One to transmit.

The one not cranking is listening to their fellow shout at them in English. He must listen to the words carefully. 

Finally, the listener takes a deep breath, presses the transmit button, holds the microphone to his lips with one trembling hand, and speaks. 

The words he speaks are not in English, but are of his mother tongue.

The language of the Diné—the Navajo.

The words flow from his tongue, loud and clear. Just like his fellow radio operator, he learned this language as a young child, but was later sent to a boarding school where he was told he must speak only English, and was punished if the teachers heard even one word of Navajo. Punishments did not deter him.

After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, a Marine recruiter was sent to a Navajo high school to ask for volunteers—but not just any volunteers.

They wanted young men who could speak both English and Navajo fluently.

“Why?” some asked. “You have been telling us to forget our language for years. Why do you want our language now?”

“Please,” the recruiters said. “We need your Navajo language. There is a secret mission we want you to participate in.”

And so they agreed. 

Steady and strong, the radio operator speaks his message into the microphone.

Before the war began, Navajo had no written form. It was a completely oral language. This was one of the elements that made it perfect for this secret project. Another perfect element is that it is so hard for any outsider to learn. Even the son of a missionary who lived on the Navajo Reservation from the age of four and interacted with the Navajos every day could not speak the complex language, but only “trader’s” Navajo, a simplistic version.

This same missionary’s son later became a civil engineer, and at the beginning of World War II he convinced the United States Marines that the Navajo language could be used to create an indecipherable code. Every code used up to that point had eventually been cracked by the Japanese. 

So far, this Navajo code has not, though it has startled more than one American radio operator. When it was tested for the first time in San Diego, California, no warning was given, due to the secret nature of the project. Alarms were sounded. It was briefly believed the Japanese had invaded the United States mainland, and proper warning was promised in the event of future test runs of the Navajo code. 

Only trained Navajo Marine code talkers can understand this code. It was not written except for during the development. There is no book to learn it from. New code talkers must be trained by the ones who developed it, and every code talker must memorize the entire code. 

The Navajo Marines on the beach of Peleliu finish their transmission, and still connected to their equipment and each other by their headphones, they pick up the thirty-pound shoebox-sized radio and run, shouting at their companion in English to do the same. Less than a minute later, a Japanese shell lands in the evacuated depression. The Japanese are excellent at pinpointing the location of a transmission, and quickly targeting it. 

Another shell soars over the Marines’ heads, and the Japanese fortification that has been firing at them explodes. Their message did this. Relaying accurately the coordinates of the enemy nest, keeping the gunners on American ships from friendly fire: this is why the Navajo code talkers must concentrate so carefully and know their code so well. Any mistake will cost the lives of their brothers-in-arms. 

A fellow Marine runs up to the code talkers and hands them a slip of paper. The speaker takes it, reads the English writing, and mentally translates it into Navajo code. The code talkers are not simply speaking the Navajo language. Every letter of the English alphabet, every English word that is used in combat transmissions, has been assigned a translation of one word, or sometimes two, in Navajo. The code word is then spoken in the Navajo language. On the other end of the transmission is another two man team of Navajo code talkers, waiting to decode it. 

Every single one of the men trained for this project is a living, breathing, walking code machine. At the same time, he is a killable one. The dark-skinned Navajos have been mistaken for Japanese enemies several times. One was killed by friendly fire when he left his foxhole after dark. To try to prevent these accidents, Marines are secretly assigned to follow and guard each code talker at all times.

Each day, the code talkers change the radio frequency. This delays Japanese interference for a short time. All too soon, the listener flinches. Somewhere on this island, Japanese soldiers have found their frequency, and are screaming into microphones and banging pots and pans in a frantic attempt to jam the messages. Other than targeting the radio location, this is the worst the Empire of the Rising Sun can do to them. The Navajo net holds firm.

As the battle for Peleliu rages, the Navajo Marine code talkers are vital. All transmissions are sent in Navajo code. According to their military leaders, the taking of this island is vital. It is home to an airfield which General MacArthur plans to use as a base. From here, he wants to launch fighter planes for the retaking of the Philippines from the Japanese.

In deaths per number of fighting men, Peleliu cost the United States the most casualties of the entire South Pacific war. It was never used to launch an attack.

When they were sent home, the Navajo Marine code talkers were warned that their mission was still completely classified. They could tell no one about the code. Other veteran radio operators would receive paperwork declaring them qualified to work on radio equipment as civilians. The Navajo code talkers would receive no such credentials.

Twenty-three years passed with the Navajo code classified. Upon declassification, an additional thirty-three years went by before the Navajo Marine code talkers were recognized for their unique service. These Marines were awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor—the highest civilian honor the United States Congress can give. Twenty-nine men who first developed the code were awarded gold Congressional Medals of Honor. Three-hundred-twenty Navajo Marines documented as later-trained code talkers were awarded silver Congressional Medals of Honor. Some of the medals were awarded posthumously. Three Navajo Marines, Felix Yazzie, Ross Haskie, and Wilson Price, who helped in the original development of the code, were never awarded Congressional Medals of Honor.

YIL-TAS is the Navajo code word for “code”. The literal translation is “peck”.

The Navajo, or Dine´, are a Native American people who inhabit what has become the southwest of the United States of America, specifically the state of New Mexico. 

"I wish the three additional men who helped develop the code had also been awarded gold medals." —Chester Nez, in his memoir Code Talker

"With the use of the Navajo language, they defeated their opponents." —Text from the Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to the Navajo Marine code talkers